


I Heard You

by Velvedere



Category: Thor (Comics)
Genre: Brother Feels, Coda, Fear Itself: Thor 7.2, Filler, Gen, The Mighty Thor #7-12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just finished reading the trade collection about events around Thor's death after the War with the Serpent.</p>
<p>I felt like there was a scene missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Heard You

“What did I tell you, children?” Loki swung his legs over the chair’s edge. “For everyone, a happy ending.”

He wiggled his fingers as he waved them off, left alone with only the sound of crackling fire for company.

“Hail Asgardia...”

He tucked his hands into his lap, and looked outward to the night sky.

The stars held their steady light in the black. The new city hovered too far above the Earth’s surface to be overly affected by its atmosphere.

No longer Asgard in name, Loki thought, but still above everything else.

Stories end. Stories begin.

Stories were much like stars, living on even after their originators had long since died.

Loki wondered if that was how he had been able to remember Thor, when no one else could.

“More likely he was simply unforgettable.” He laughed out loud, and swung his legs again to hop down from the chair.

The truth was probably much simpler. Something to do with the magic involved, and himself being a wielder of it, but the initial thought brought a smile to his lips.

He would cling to it.

Loki yawned and stretched. He looked again to the window of the small chamber, and to the stars.

Now that the kiddies were in bed, perhaps he could pay his dear brother a visit. Asgardia lay quiet with sleep, the festivities and celebration of a battle won long over. Now would be his best chance to catch Thor without an admiring crowd.

Well, most likely he would be with Sif, but it would hardly be the first time Loki had slipped by her notice. Or intruded where he wasn’t wanted.

He stepped up to the stone windowsill and hopped out into the night.

*****

He found Thor on the balcony outside his chambers, arms crossed as he faced the sky.

His wounds from the battle had been cleaned and dressed. Wind toyed at his hair.

Loki pulled himself up over the railing and perched like a cat. He crouched, for a moment silent, before he tilted his head.

“Distracted, brother?”

Thor looked aside to him slowly, gently. His smile was warm.

“Is it so obvious?”

“If I had been an assassin...” Loki leaned his weight back and hooked one arm over his knee. “You would already be dead.”

To which Thor laughed.

“I think you would find me not so easy to kill.”

He laughed, and Loki grinned with him, though it was a merriment short lived.

Perhaps Loki’s choice of phrase was not so appropriate, given recent events.

Thor turned his gaze back out to the stars.

“But you did, didn’t you?” Loki whispered, following his eyes. “You were dead.”

Thor nodded.

“I was.”

“What did you see?”

Thor took a breath. His arms tightened, as though cold.

“I saw a great void,” he answered, giving pause. “And ships carrying dead gods to be devoured by an insatiable monster.”

“Sounds a far cry from Valhalla.” Loki wrinkled his nose.

“Yes.”

Thor fell quiet again.

Loki watched him think.

“Nobody here remembered you,” he murmured, when the silence went on.

That, above all, had been the greatest insult in the wake of Thor’s death. That even his legacy would not have been allowed to survive him.

“Nor did I remember myself,” said Thor. “Until...”

He turned his gaze aside to Loki, who met his eyes. Curious.

“What?”

“I heard you,” Thor said, with a wonderment in his voice as though he only now recalled. “I heard you pray to me, and then I saw you. You were with the Surfer, trying to lift Mjolnir. I heard you say ‘Thor...please, hear me...don’t give up...’”

Loki felt rooted to the spot.

He remembered that moment, a split second before Mjolnir erupted to life and would have taken the Surfer with her if Loki hadn’t tackled him out of the way.

He remembered the power, and that sense of connection.

He remembered he had _known_.

“I knew you weren’t gone,” he said, nearly choking on the sudden tightness in his throat. “I knew. The others didn’t, but I _knew_...”

Thor stepped away from the balcony’s edge.

He unfolded his arms, and held them open.

“I heard you,” he said, a comfort in his rich voice that did nothing to ease the burn in Loki’s cheeks. “And I did not give up.”

Loki slid down from the railing. He dragged one arm across his eyes.

Then he ran to his brother.

Thor knelt to catch him as he flung himself into his arms, sobbing fully by then, and latched on with such vehemence not even Thor himself could have pried him loose.

“I will not give up, either,” Loki wept into his hair. “I will never stop believing...”

Thor held him, and comforted him, and kissed his brow when the childlike frame of his body shook with his tears.

“Nor will I,” he said, finding his smile amid Loki’s distressed relief. “Brother.”


End file.
